The present invention relates generally to a musical information recording and reproducing technique for use with a recording medium having a UTOC (User's-table-of-contents) area.
More particularly, the present invention relates to musical information recording and reproducing devices and a musical information recording medium which permit display of a measure being currently reproduced and selective quick access to the starting point of any desired measure.
The present invention also relates to a multichannel mixing recorder for recording input musical signals onto optionally selected channels and mixing the musical signals recorded on the plural channels, and more particularly to such a multichannel mixing recorder which allows a user to readily verify the assignment of various performance parts to individual channels to thereby achieve smooth multiplex recording and editing.
On recording media such as a CD (Compact Disk), MD (Mini Disk) and DCC (Digital Compact Cassette), there are recorded musical information of music pieces and address information associated therewith. Thus, during reproduction from the media, the address of every point of the music piece being currently reproduced can be displayed in a succesive manner. Additionally. information indicative of the respective starting points (heads) of the individual music pieces is also recorded on the media as TOC (Table of Contents) information so that the starting point of any desired music piece can be immediately accessed on the basis of this TOC information.
In musical education, or other cases where a recorded musical instrument performance is reproduced for practices on the instrument, it may be very convenient if a player is informed of which measure in the score is being currently reproduced by a reproducing device. It may be even more convenient if the starting point of a specific measure can be immediately accessed by mere designation of a unique number allocated to that measure. However, none of the conventionally known CD, MD and DCC playing devices were capable of achieving such measure-by-measure display and starting point access, although they could permit display of the varying addresses (passage of time) and starting point access for each of the music pieces recorded. Consequently, the known CD, MD and DCC playing devices were not so convenient for purposes like musical education and musical instrument practices.
Further, in the known CD, MD or DCC playing devices, multichannel recording is done by first performing rhythm parts to record the performed rhythm parts onto optionally designated individual channels ("initial recording"), then performing one or more other parts, while reproducing the recorded rhythm parts, to record the other parts onto other channels ("overdubbing"), and finally reproducing and mixing together the recorded performance parts of all the channels so as to ultimately output the resultant mixed performance parts through two (right and left) channels ("mixdown"). Where relatively many performance parts are involved, the multichannel recording is done by first overdubbing and mixing some of the performance parts, then temporarily transferring the resultant mixed performance parts onto an empty channel ("ping-pong recording") so as to record other performance parts onto the channels that have become empty due to the ping-pong recording, and finally mixing down the recorded performance parts of all the channels.
However, with the conventionally known CD, MD or DCC playing device, the multichannel recording involves preparing a planning sheet where there are written, for each of the steps, the assignment of the performance parts to the individual channels and various settings such as effectors to be applied to the performance parts. The operator (i.e., person in charge) handles the channel assignment etc. in accordance with the planning sheet. However, whenever it was desired to ascertain, during recording, which parts have so far been assigned to which channels, the operator had to refer to the planning sheet.